The Quintuplets

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In nineteen thirty-four, a woman named Elzier Dion was pregnant in Ontario. She was twenty-five. She and her husband, Oliva, lived on a farm and already had five children. And now she thought she might be having twins. She was due in July. On May twenty eighth, she went into labor very early in the morning. Her aunt came to the house. She'd helped deliver Elzir's babies before.

Auntie LeGreux comes and sees that things just don't seem right. Elzier doesn't s she's just not well, and she's frightened. Author Sarah Miller. And so they call the local midwife. and the two midwives deliver one, then two, and then in shock three. baby girls. In the meantime they have also s had Oliva go for the doctor, go get Dr. Dayfog. So the doctor arrives just as the third baby is delivered. and he scrubs up and he assists in the delivery of two more infants.

How how big are these babies? They're so tiny. They are all five of them together weigh under 14 pounds. The doctor, Alan Roy Daifo, had helped deliver a set of quadruplets twenty-six years earlier. But none of them had lived more than a week. There were no records of any quintuplets anywhere in the world that had survived longer than fifty days.

He then looked at the babies and made a statement to the midwives They're not gonna be alive come daylight. I'm going home. Brian Callahan, Elzir and Oliva's grandson. As Dr. Daifo was leaving, Oliva's brother Leon arrived. The doctor told Leon about the five babies. He actually called the newspaper in North Bay called the North Bay Nugget. and inquired about placing a birth notice in the newspaper and he asked if a notice for five babies would cost more than just a regular notice for one baby.

The editor thinks it's a joke. He's like, Leon, you're you're kidding me, come on. And he says, No, you know, his sister in law has just given birth to five little girls and the the editor says, It it's free. We're gonna print this one for nothing. That morning, about six hours after the birth, a reporter and photographer from the North Bay Nugget arrived at the Dion's house. Elzier's aunt let them inside to take a picture.

It was a picture of uh my grandmother laying in bed with the five babies right beside her. And at the time that picture was uh put on by telegram and sent all over the world. The babies were identical. At first they were just labeled ABCD and E, but within a few days they had names: Yvonne, Annette, Cecile, Emily, and Marie. The smallest baby was two pounds, four ounces. Everyone was concerned for all of them, but Marie's existence was by far the most precarious because she was just so little.

So initially like they're putting opening the oven door and putting a basket on the door and putting the babies in this basket in front of the open oven because they need to be kept warm. um, you know, hot water bottles pinned to the sides of the basket because they they need an incubator, but there is no such thing within hundreds of miles.

Doctor Daifo drove to the Red Cross to get more help. That evening they sent a twenty-one year old nurse named Yvonne LaRue. She stayed up through the night with the quintoplets. The next day at 5 30 AM, Dr. Daifo got a phone call from a newspaper editor in Chicago asking if the babies were still alive. Then a journalist from New York called Then a doctor, a health commissioner in Chicago, who said he was an expert on premature babies. He asked Dr. Dafo what he needed.

Elzir Dion had actually had trouble nursing her singly born babies. Her milk supply was was not that high. And so they have to improvise. What are they gonna feed these these babies if they keep living? Um and at first it's just water, and then he comes up with this improvised formula of cow's milk and corn syrup.

But there are these really frightening spells when they start to turn blue and you know they're not getting enough oxygen is what the real issue is. But he concocts another little formula with diluted rum. which he's instructing the midwives and nurses to give them to bring them back. The doctor in Chicago said he would send frozen breast milk, and he said that the babies needed to be kept at 85 degrees with an incubator, but the Dions didn't have any electricity.

Chicago newspaper sends one of its reporters. with an incubator. They find an incubator that does not need electricity. Very old fashioned model they had to go into the the basement or the attic of this medical supply warehouse in Chicago, and this fellow called Charlie Blake gets on a train with this incubator and speeds north with it. A reporter and photographer from the Toronto Star brought a car full of supplies and gifts when they came to take pictures of the babies.

To everyone's astonishment, they just keep living. I mean they say that in the newspapers over and over again. They're still breathing, they're still living. People, that's such a basic thing to say, but it is so unheard of. It has never happened in four hundred years of recorded medical history. Doctor Daifo famously

said, you know, somebody asked him, what do they look like? He said, like rats. One of the reporters said that you would almost swear they're transparent when he saw one of them lifted up like for a bath or diaper change. There's a picture of Nurse LaRue holding one of the girls, and that baby's entire torso is contained in her palm.

The day after the babies were born, the Toronto Star printed three pictures of the Dion family. The article read, Have a good chance of surviving, states Quintuplett's doctor. Mr and Mrs. Dion don't fare as well with the press, or Mr Dion in particular.

Um but even Mrs. Dion is the very morning of the birth when she first talks to her husband about what's just happened to them, she says, What will people think? They'll they'll think we're pigs. And that's kind of in reference to She feels like people are gonna think she's had a litter of babies and that that's somehow vulgar. And Mr. Dion, when he's first confronted with the press, They ask him, well, do you feel proud of yourself?

And something about the tone or the manner of that question got right under his skin immediately. And what he swore to his dying day that he said was You you talk like I should be put in jail. But what they reported him as saying was, I'm the type of fellow that should be put in jail, as if he was indeed ashamed of having fathered so many children at once. And that encounter would taint his view of the press for the rest of his life.

The next day, May thirtieth, the Toronto Star reported that Oliva had agreed to take the Quintuplets to the World's Fair in Chicago. A promoter had reached out to him about a deal to put the quintoplets on display there. When the World's Fair calls and says, Hey, we we want your babies, they are offering solutions to so many problems that just arose so suddenly, such as

Who's footing the bill? Nobody has really talked about who's paying the nurses, who's paying the doctor, who's paying for these shipments of breast milk that come every day. Their family literally doubled overnight. They had five children. On may twenty seventh. They had ten children on may twenty eighth. And the folks at the World's Fair say

If you bring your babies here, we will give them the best care that is medically available in the city of Chicago. We will pay your expenses, we will travel expenses, we will pay your living expenses for yourself, your wife, all of your children. They said they would also pay for the baby's medical care for up to six weeks before coming to the fair. Oliva went to ask their local priest for advice.

They drove south so they could meet the promoter and to review the contract. He wanted a provision added saying if the children weren't well enough to travel, that the you know, the contract was off. The promoter said okay, and Oliva signed the contract. When he arrived home, there were even more cameras and journalists waiting outside, some addressed as nuns coming to pray for the babies in an attempt to get inside. Oliva refused to talk to them or be filmed.

The World's Fair promoter announced that they'd signed a contract, and newspapers reported exactly how much money Oliva would make from exhibiting the Quintoplet. two hundred and fifty dollars a week, and over twenty percent of ticket sales. Within about twenty four hours, Oliver Diane begins to regret signing that contract. Um I think in part because of the way people reacted, they think he's putting his daughters up for sale, more or less.

The Cleveland Press reported that doctor Defo did not agree with the decision Oliva had made. Quote, as long as I am boss, there will be no trip anywhere for these babies. The father can go if he wants to, but not the children. It appears publicly that Dr. Defoe and Oliver Diane are going head to head as if mister Dion wants to take the children to Chicago and doctor Defoe is sort of like putting himself in front of the incubator and saying, No, no, I no, I won't let you do this.

When in fact it was Oliver Dion's insistence on putting that clause into the contract that gave doctor Defoe the power to say, we're not moving these babies yet. Olifa started trying to get out of the Chicago contract. He refused to cash checks from the promoter. He said the contract didn't mean anything because Elzier hadn't signed it too. But the promoter said it was legally binding. The government comes up with this plan to protect the babies from being sent to Chicago, which is

If the Dionns will sign custody of those five children to the Red Cross, they will be protected. Because all of a Dion is still bound by that contract he signed. But the Red Cross is not. So if they transfer custody, the children are protected. And so with great reluctance, but with no other way around it, Oliveye and Elzir sign a different a brand new contract. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join criminal.

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In July of nineteen thirty-four, Elzir and Oliva Dion signed a contract which would give the Red Cross guardianship of the Quintuplets for two years. The Red Cross would pay for the nurses and milk shipments. They began building a special hospital for the quintuplets across the street from the Dion's house. While they were waiting for the hospital to be done, a nurse partitioned off the parlour of the house for the Quintuplis.

doctor Defoe was so worried about the babies getting sick that he barely allowed anyone besides the nurses inside. The parents are left just sort of feeling like almost like aliens in their own home. And Elzir after that birth is not well for several days, if not weeks. So she's so distressed by her separation from her newborn daughters that

Grandpa Dion cuts a hole in the wall. He makes a little window so that she can look through from her bed and see into the baby's room. Construction on the new hospital began in August. People are literally sending nickels. to Northern Ontario to help build the hospital for these babies.

Um one little girl from Rhode Island sent a nickel and said, Well I I wish I could send more, but Daddy only works three days a week to keep us five going, so that's all they could spare. But they wanted to send all they could spare. In late September, when the quintuplets were just under four months old, Dr. Daifo and the nurses moved the babies to the finished hospital. It was billed as this sort of infant utopia.

because everything was going to be modern and new and just for them and the best of everything. There were chimes that were rung at these certain hours for meals, for playtime, even for like there was Six designated potty times.

during the day. There was this sort of aura around the science of child rearing, and it was presented to the public as though These children were going to have the best possible upbringing because we're going to have The latest in everything, scientifically, psychologically, is all it's all going to be here for them and we are going to make these children the most perfect children you ever saw. Elzir and Oliva were allowed to visit at any time as long as no one in their house was sick.

The official policy is anytime you want there your children, come on in, but the the logistics and everything just make it feel very strange to the Dion. who walks across the street to see their children? There's a fence with barbed wire, and they had to like ring a bell and wait for the guards to let them in. Once they're past those gates, they are always

under the nurse's gaze, and Elzir in particular felt very much like she was treated like a criminal, like she couldn't be trusted with her own children. Crowds of people had started driving to the hospital to see the Quintoplas. But they would also gather around the Dion's house. Once a man broke their kitchen window and reached inside.

In February of 1935, things have calmed down a bit. There's been some health scares with the babies that have passed. And things are seeming fairly stable. And once again it dawns on Olivier, okay, in two years These five children are are going to come home. Well, then what? We still have the same house. He still has the same job.

More than he can financially stretch to. And so for that reason, the Dion's explain, they go on a vaudeville tour in the United States in February of nineteen thirty five. A theater agent from Chicago had proposed the idea to them for$1,700 a week. It was basically just a little bit.

displaying themselves. All they did, in essence, was say, you know, we thank you for your attention, we thank you for all of your care and your prayers and your donations. And mister Dion said two or three sentences in English. And uh misses Dion said, Thank you very much and may God bless you in French, because that was her native language, and that was it. Audiences loved it. But newspapers published jokes making fun of the Dionnes. They called Oliva a quote little shrimp and the tour a flop.

The Premier of Ontario called it fairly Nauseating to Canadians, revolting and cheap. We're trying to save these children from exploitation. We gave them a beautiful hospital. The Red Cross is taking care of them, and now look at what their parents are doing. They're out Exploiting and exposing themselves for money. In March, the Ontario legislature proposed a new bill about the Dion Quintopolis.

The legislature proposes taking forcibly seizing control and custody of Yvonne Annette, Cecile, Emily and Marie, making them wards of the crown until they are eighteen years old to save them. from the exploitation that now people seem to believe um they will suffer at the hands of their own parents. Are they allowed to do that? Uh, they did it. It caused a great deal of debate in the legislature, but ultimately the Dion's five daughters became wards of the crown.

It was called the Dion Quintuplet Guardianship Act, and it made the Minister of Public Welfare the Quintuplet's special guardian, along with a board appointed by the government. The minister said, These children are our own royal family. We want to make it possible for them to lead normal lives. When the bill passed, Elzir and Oliva packed bags and tried to move into the hospital in protest, but a police officer showed up, and after two hours they went home.

They said over and over again, we're raising these five other children. Nobody has has complained about them. And they they characterized it as kidnapping. The Quintoplets were nine months old.

That spring, Dr. Daifo had started letting some visitors inside the hospital between 2 and 3 in the afternoon to look through a window into the nursery. It turns out that that that gazing through the windows kind of m seems to make the babies nervous. And so they change tactics and start displaying the the children on the front porch.

Of the nursery at set times during the day. They would put out a placard that said Yvonne, and one of the nurses would come out and hold up Yvonne, and the people lined up at the fence would just cheer and fight. because they were identical, they could dupe the public. So if Cecile was having a rough time, they could just show Emily twice, just change the sign, change the nurse, bring out the same baby, and at that distance no one was any the wiser. Are they being charged?

No, no, it's always free, of course, because the government the government can't exploit these children and money equals exploitation, so there is no charge. Journalists and psychologists debated whether the public should be allowed to view the quintoplets. A well-known psychologist wrote in Cosmopolitan, Life in a glasshouse is not conducive to normal human development. Babies are not fishes.

But then he recommended they be separated and raised by different families, quote, to make them forget they are quintoplets. A judge on the Quintuplet's Guardianship Board said These children are the treasures of the world. Why should they not be seen? They said, Well, people are gonna come no matter what, and the more we try to thwart them, the more obnoxious they're gonna become, so we need to do it on our terms. And that's the tactic that they took. And what did they do?

They built an observatory, a horseshoe-shaped building, and in the center of the horseshoe is a playground. So you enter, if you're a member of the public who wants to see the Dionquin tuplets at play, you enter through sort of the bottom of the U in that horseshoe, and you file in one of two directions, and there are these windows that allegedly are one way. They've put these screens that are painted white.

over the windows. So the theory is you can look out into the playground at the children, but they can't see you. And the the observatory is lined with cork and felt to muffle sounds. People are admonish not to speak and stuff, but they do'cause they just can't help themselves. They are not to take pictures, they are just to file

in an orderly fashion through this, you know, whatever leg of the horseshoe you choose. And you can go through that observatory as many times as you please during the observation period, but traffic must be kept in motion at all times. You're not to linger. So the children, um the policy states health and weather permitting, are herded into their little private playground and are stared at for twice a day every day.

The observatory opened on july first, nineteen thirty six, just after the baby's second birthday. How did they seem to react to this attention? There are mixed accounts. There are some nurses who claim that the children were completely oblivious, and there are others who are like, that's nonsense because They observed the girls ev you know after the public had left.

if the children were given access to those windows, they would take their building blocks and and sort of climb up to the windows and wave at nobody. They knew people were in there looking at them and they would perform. Emily took particular delight in climbing the jungle gym and ma you know, looking precarious and and making people gasp and wonder if she was gonna fall.

And there were times when it it did, some nurses said it it seemed to disturb them. They seemed to not want to be there. Between three and six thousand people came every day to see the Quintoplas. Outside the gates of the hospital all kinds of tents and stands had started popping up to sell things to tourists. Newspapers called it Quintland. Elzier's aund was the first one to open a tent.

She sold food, she sold souvenirs, she she told her story, offered autographs. The two midwives um wrote a little pamphlet describing the birth and the family and everything that they would sign. Oliva opened a booth too. He sold photographs, postcards, and autographs for a quarter. In nineteen thirty seven, the Dionquin Tuplets were a more popular tourist attraction than Niagara Falls. businesses are booming because these folks, again, that have come so far to see the famous Dion Quint Uplets.

They need other stuff to do, if they've come that far. Well, you might as well offer them hotels and restaurants and fishing excursions and the girl's uncle Leon ran a gas station and he installed five gas pumps and put Yvonne, Annette, Cecile, Emily and Marie's name each had was assigned to a a gas pump. And also, critically it will come out later, the province is pocketing all kinds of money because they are charging a higher gas tax.

than any other province in Canada. Because they can, because people are going to pay it because they want to see the Dionquin Touplets. And when you've got to drive a couple hundred miles north of Toronto That adds up. Newspapers paid thousands of dollars for exclusive rights to photograph the quintuplets, and Hollywood producers made a deal to shoot three movies in their nursery.

The Madame Alexander Doll Company made sets of five identical dolls named after the quintuplets. Companies use their photos and advertisements to their doctor Dafo gave endorsements to the Products like carrow syrup, palm olive soap, colgate toothpaste, baby roof candy. Anything Dr. Daifo said was the best.

For the Dion Quintuplets was perceived as the best for anybody, and he was paid for that. His influence was so great that at that time there was some hesitation toward things like pasteurization of milk and vaccination. And when Dr. Daifo comes out and says pasteurized milk is best for your child, vaccinations are best for your child, that has a great effect on public health.

So milkborne illnesses decrease markedly, as do a lot of childhood diseases that people, you know, who had been wary about vaccinating their children, when they hear that the Dionns are vaccinated and they see the pictures. of the Dion's being inoculated in the papers, they say, okay, if if the Dion quintuplets are receiving this, then I'm going to trust that and that it's best for my child as well. In nineteen thirty seven, doctor Defoe said.

There isn't any point in bringing them up as normal children. They must learn to be looked at, talked about, and studied without losing their sense of proportion or their ability to enjoy life. And because they will always have to buy their privacy and pay dearly for it. We are trying to build up sufficient funds to make it possible for them to have peace and freedom as the years go by.

The money from the photographs and advertisements went into a trust fund for the quintoplets, managed by the Guardianship Board. Oliva was a member of the board, but he stopped attending meetings when he kept being outvoted. Elzir was worried the quintoplets weren't getting enough to eat. She fought with the nurses. When a nurse left her job at the hospital and the quintuplets would cry, they remembered Elzir would get angry. The nurses are put in this position.

They are the children's Uh parents. They're never supposed to speak sharply. To physically discipline the children. But on the other side of that is they're not supposed to hug and kiss them either. So for instance, when they're put to bed at night, It's you're put in your crib and it's lights out. There's no toys, there's no singing, there's no rocking chair, there's none of that kind of routine.

Twice a day the quintuplets had their hair curled. Researchers visited to analyze their physical similarities, their handprints and eyelids, and their personalities. It was reported Dr. Daifo had them on a special diet to quote, keep them from growing too fast. On holidays, like Halloween and Valentine's Day, they did special photo shoots. Their birthday parties were filmed.

Later, Cecile said, The gifts were all empty boxes. The cake was a big hole. It was always like that. There was no cake at all when we cut it, and The Quintuplets were allowed to leave the hospital for the first time, when they were about five years old, to meet Queen Elizabeth in Toronto.

By 1940, Oliva had filed two lawsuits against Dr. Defoe. He demanded that Dr. Defoe reveal how much he was making from advertising contracts and put his profits in the trust fund. Dr. Defo resigned from the Guardianship Board, and Oliva withdrew the lawsuits. By then, World War II had begun, and fewer Americans were making trips to Quintland. And the way a journalist wrote about the quintoplets was changing.

As the girls grew up, they became there's there's not a nice way to say it. They weren't as cute as they used to be. They got to be perfectly ordinary looking little girls. And that didn't have the same draw as these adorable little ringleted toddlers. A nurse who had taken care of them as babies came to visit them at Quintland in nineteen forty two, when the Quintuplets were seven, and told her reporter I was disappointed in them. I thought they were not as pretty.

Another former nurse spoke up, saying she felt sorry for the Quintopolis. The tide of public sympathy starts to turn toward mister and misses Dion and away from the doctor. Doctor Defoe had been diagnosed with colon cancer and went away for surgery. Then it's like six months or so, it's it's quite some time before they see him again. And in that intervening period, they've realized that the expectation is to love their parents.

They can feel that expectation from their parents now. And so when Defoe returns from his recovery, the feeling between them is very, very different. One nurse said, they just wouldn't go near him. We literally had to push them. Later, the quintuplet said, We were old enough to know that mom and dad did not want us to do that. We were anxious to please. Then Dr. Daifo died of pneumonia. He was 60. No one told the quintoplets for six months. And in nineteen forty three, at nine years old,

The girls were sent home to live with the rest of their family. They have two new little brothers have been born, so now there's seven siblings that they haven't seen that much of, and they're all expected to just magically have this this fairy tale reunion and everything is supposed to be great. And Cecile and Yvonne, like one says it and the other snaps her fingers and they say it was like that. All of a sudden, your life as you know it in the nursery is over. We'll be right back.

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When you're ready to launch, use the offer code CRIMINAL to save ten percent off your first report. Nu har vi med oss Sandra. Du och familjen fick punkka på bilen innan egens hn fram till djurparken. Ja, så det blev hängt på erfirns rastplats istället. Ja. Vi fick ju se några äckhårar i alla fall. Hoj dess naturliga habitat och allt. Dagens hjälper lite. Presenteras av Iff, som hjälper mycket.

I've heard the story all my life growing up. Uh I'd be at my grandparents' house every weekend. Brian Callahan. His mother, Therese, was one of the Dion Quintuplet's older sisters. She was fourteen when the Quintuplets were sent home to live with the rest of their family on their farm. They'd moved into a new house that Oliva had built with money from the Quintoplets Trust Fund. They called it the Big House.

As a a young boy I'd I'd play in that house uh when it stood empty. When the Quintoplets moved back in, Oliva said he wanted everyone to act like one big family. One way or the other, the siblings weren't interested in being part of the family with the quints, and the quints in turn weren't interested in being part of the family with the siblings. If you can understand that.

For the first time the quintoplets were separated into different bedrooms. At dinner time, at the table, they weren't seated together, they were all sandwiched between their siblings. Oliva didn't think the quintoplets should go to a regular school, so they eventually started a private school for them in the old hospital nursery.

Instead of having the siblings go to school with their sisters, they then interviewed and selected ten young ladies from the surrounding area to come in and go to school with the Quints as their classmates. Later, one of their classmates said, They wouldn't confide in us for a long, long time. You had to really, really work on gaining their confidence. When they did, the quintoplets would ask the other girls questions about everything: going to the movies, getting soda, having boyfriends.

At first, the quinteplets slept at the school during the week, but when they got closer with their classmates and teachers, Oliva told them. Morally, those people are taking you farther and farther from your parents. They are there to divide our family, once again. After that, Oliva wanted them to come back to the big house for meals and to sleep.

There was no bonding, even for the nine years that they actually did live together. They didn't know each other. You had the five princesses. They were raised by the nursing staff. Everything was done for them. They had no concept how to take care of themselves, let alone do farm work. Meanwhile the other siblings, uh they were out still out working the farm. mister Dion wanted them to be one of the family, not one of five.

But they they craved that that fiveness, you know, that togetherness that they'd had for almost a decade together in the nursery. That that feeling to them was home to them more than any physical place. And yet they wanted to be individuals also. They were very weary of being treated as a group with no no differentiation between the five of them. So they kind of wanted to go their separate ways, and yet they really didn't know how or what it would be like to live like that.

When they were eighteen, Oliva enrolled them at a small Catholic women's college in Quebec. Even though it was you know the small world of the campus. They felt that freedom and really reveled in it, in addition to being able to be together as much as they wanted and craved with no no punishment for that. So it was the first time in their life when they were free. After about a year, Marie left school to join a convent.

And then so did Emily. Emily has epilepsy, which is a huge secret. Almost nobody outside of the family knows it. And while she Is in this convent contemplating whether, you know, to stay, if this is really for her or not. She has a seizure and she dies. Her sisters were all at home visiting when they got the news. They were 20 years old.

Cecile said there was there was a part of her that she almost believed that they were immortal, because it it had been such a miracle that they had lived, she didn't fully understand, it seems, that they could also die. But at the same time, they say that was the real start of them finding their individuality. Because once there's only four instead of five, then the public Attention really, really diverts. It's like they're not they're not magic anymore.

There's a picture of the five of them together. Emily is in a casket. Yvonne later said she remembered thinking, Emily is still playing the part of a quintuplet for the camera, even though she's dead. Oliva opened their house to anyone, quote, genuine in their grief, and five thousand people came to see Emily. Shortly after, Yvonne, Annette, Cecile, and Marie found out about their trust fund.

because they had no concept of its accumulation, they did not know how much had been just sort of dribbled or siphoned away. The account contained about eight hundred thousand dollars for the sisters. They would get access when they turned twenty-one. Emily's share would be split among all the members of the Dion family. But there were rules about how and when they could use the money, and they had to keep paying to maintain their parents' house.

Marie left her convent and decided to use the money to open a flower shop called Salon Emily. She liked to give flowers away to friends in churches. The shop closed after six months. Annette and Cecile both married. Cecile used trust fund money for her wedding, and left her bouquet at Emily's grave. Marie married two. All three had children. Yvonne went to nursing school and eventually became a librarian. They all stayed in Quebec.

Marie died at thirty-five, reportedly from a blood clot in her brain. Cecile eventually divorced. So did Annette. Her husband seems to have been a very good, kind, understanding man, but as he said, you know, he would he would make plans with his wife in the morning, go to work. And then come home and find that the plans had been changed because like Yvonne showed up and the two sisters just changed everything. And he said, I you know, I only married one person.

It's you have to choose. It's either me or it's them. As Yvonne, Annette, and Cecile got older, they stayed close, often calling each other every day. For a while, they moved in together. And the money that was left in the trust fund dwindled. Cecil's son Bertrand was She...

was very aware of his mother's financial struggles, even as like a kid in school. He knew and he remembered very specifically somebody coming into class and they had a pencil with his mother's face and his four aunts faces on it and he thought Why is there this pencil with their faces on it and they don't get any money for this? So as an adult, he goes to the Archive of Ontario and he starts digging into the Quintuplet Guardianship files and looking for the financial records.

In Toronto, Bertrand found that between the ages of four and ten, half of the Quintuplet's trust fund had been spent. And the records of the first three years of guardianship board meetings had been burned by the welfare minister. He comes home with like literally suitcases full of documents, discovering things like When the welfare minister who was part of the Dianquintuplet Guardians Board, when he would come to North Bay and

To look over the books. He wasn't charging his lodging and his fish and chips to his department. He was charging it to the Dion Quintuplet account. The Dionns were being billed for their own birthday present. They were being billed for the toilet paper in the public washroom at Quintland. The Quintuplet Fund had paid. For mister Dion's new cars. The girls had unknowingly paid tuition for their siblings' educations. They paid for doctor Dayfo's stamps and telephone bills and telegrams.

the nurse's tennis court. Anytime somebody could dip into there and justify it as necessary for maintaining that whole Dion show, they did. And then Bertrand found out about the gas tax. In the Quintland years, Ontario had increased its gas tax to six or eight cents a gallon, versus the two or three cents in other provinces. That was really a big fat nail in the coffin for him saying, that's proof.

that the government knew what these children were quote unquote worth to the province and that they were being used to make money. Bertrand went to court to get royalties back for use of the sisters' names and faces, which no one had paid since nineteen fifty seven. They asked for ten million dollars in restitution from the government of Ontario.

More than a year later, the Ontario government offered to pay Yvonne, Annette, and Cecile, each two thousand dollars a month for the rest of their lives. And they find it just deeply offensive. Like we didn't ask for an allowance, you know. This was this was money that was set aside for us. Where is it?

The sisters decided to hold a press conference in Toronto. They take the sort of for them unprecedented step, after all those years of being, in my opinion, abused by the media, they finally took the reins. And then the premier offers two million dollars and the Dion say, no, not enough. He offers three million dollars. And they say, no, not enough. And finally he says four million dollars and an inquiry into the accounting. And they accepted that.

Brian Callahan says that beyond that press conference, the sisters had hardly ever come back to Ontario. You remember seeing them when Oliva died in nineteen seventy nine? What were your aunts like at the funeral? Very very uh soft spoken. Uh y you you wouldn't know that they were there. They just kind of blended in. In 1995, Annette, Yvonne, and Cecile said publicly that Oliva had sexually abused them as children.

They said that it had taken a long time to talk about. Quote, but that's normal for something so deep. They remembered telling a priest when they were younger. And he felt bound by his religious duty as as if that had been a sort of confession. He didn't think he was able to tell that outside of the the confession booth. When the news came out Brian's mother, Therese told a reporter, We assert that we had good parents, and that to our knowledge, our father was certainly not a sexual abuser.

They just didn't understand how a secret so monumental could have been kept when they were all in the same house. All the uh other siblings actually uh Signed a joint letter denying anything uh to that fact, refuting uh the claims of the Quints. I I believe that it didn't happen, but uh who's to say? Yeah, I mean it that must be that must be a difficult thing to have Circulating. you know, m m very divisive I can only imagine for a family. Oh yes it was.

And you have to understand that to this family, due to what they were put through, the number five to them was like a number thirteen to most families, considered unlucky. Brian remembers when his younger brother joined a junior ice hockey team. His name wasn't Dion, so nobody knew his relationship. Uh what number do you think they gave him to wear playing for the North Bay Trappers? Five.

My mother refused to go and watch him play hockey because he was wearing the number five. Extreme? Certainly. That's the way it was with the family. Today, there's a Dion Quince Museum in North Bay, Ontario, inside the log house where the Quintuplets were born. A ninety thour year old woman come up this summer. Her son drove her up from Colorado.

And she was actually she actually came up when she was three years old to see the Quintuplas with her grandparents, drove all the way up, expecting to play with them. And of course she wasn't allowed to play with them, so s she made a pilgrimage, so she called it, to come up and uh fulfil her uh The one item on her bucket list for that. And she's not the only one. Brian says another woman told him she visited because it was her own mother's dying wish.

Sometimes the museum gets donations of vintage dolls and other Quintuplets memorabilia people collected. In total, over three million people came to see the Dion Quintuplets at Quintland. You have to understand that it was in the depression era and it gave people a a ray of hope. You know, something to something to brighten their day.

Annette Dion told the New York Times, I think the museum staying in North Bay will help them from making foolish choices, like what the It should never be repeated again. In 2016, Cecile told the Montreal Gazette that her son Bertrand, who'd been managing her money for her, had disappeared. Her money was gone, and she was made a ward of the state. Last year she and Annette, the last surviving quintuplets, died. They were ninety one.

To see the famous photo of Alzier Dion and the Quintuplets on the day they were born, go to our Instagram at criminal underscore podcast. Or find us on Facebook at This Is Criminal. Or also on YouTube at youtube.com/slash criminal podcast. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sejiko, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Meghan Canaan.

Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Sarah Miller's book is The Miracle and Tragedy of the Dion Quintuplets. You can find a link on our website. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com slash newsletter.

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